This GTA neighbourhood has a staggering rate of COVID-19 infections. Families are struggling, and essential workers are scared. Inside the ‘perfect storm in Peel’

At the northeast corner of Queen Street East and Airport Road in Brampton begins a large stretch of multi-sized warehouses, factories and shops. On any given day, the movement of small and large trucks loading or unloading is about the only observable activity in the area, save for occasional construction work. It’s kilometres in either direction before you reach residential parts of the neighbourhood, a mixture of multi-unit housing buildings and stand-alone or semi-detached homes.

This is the part of the Greater Toronto Area that has emerged as the place most affected by .

Last week, the Star reported that the : that is to say, nearly one in five residents being tested for the virus receive a positive result, based on analysis conducted by non-profit research institute ICES. Peel Region as a whole has a positivity rate of 9.8 per cent, the highest in the GTA.

For residents of this neighbourhood, it is regrettable that some people’s behaviour may have contributed to the increase in positivity rates, but they say a big part of why the coronavirus is running rampant here stems from external factors beyond their control.

Take Robbie Singh, for example. The 28-year-old tow truck driver, who has lived in this part of Brampton his entire life, says that unlike many others whose jobs allow them the luxury to work from home or take paid time off, he hasn’t stopped working, even during the lockdown months at the beginning of the pandemic.

In addition to observing health measures at work — always wearing a mask, washing hands and sanitizing — he has to regularly book testing appointments to ensure his own safety and that of his family.

“I mean, someone has to do the job,” said Singh as he left the testing site at Gore Meadows Community Centre last week.

“It’s scary, because in Brampton, almost everyone is an essential worker and we get out all the time, which exposes us to the virus more than other people in other places.”

Colin Furness, an infection control epidemiologist at the University of Toronto, says the rate of spread in the region has been foreseeable since March.

“You’ve got a perfect storm in Peel,” he said.

There’s a large population of immigrants, crowded households, and poorly paid employees engaged in precarious yet essential work, all of which makes the region more vulnerable, he said.

In Brampton, industries including manufacturing, retail, transportation and warehousing, and hospitality accounted for 43 per cent of residents’ jobs, according to data from the 2016 census. These are industries that have been deemed essential and often do not allow people the chance to work from home.

“Ontario has been managing COVID like a political problem, rather than a public health problem,” Furness said, noting that outbreaks in places such as long-term-care homes are politically “embarrassing” and were addressed quickly and vocally by the province.

“Migrant farm workers, homeless people … racialized communities — people don’t seem to care about (them) so much, so they just haven’t gotten resources,” Furness said. “COVID is a racist problem … It’s layers of tragedy here.”

Before going on maternity leave earlier this year, Racine Grenaway worked in retail at Canadian Tire. Her husband works in a food processing factory in Toronto, and the family decided that he would stay with a cousin in town rather than travel home every day and risk infecting her or their three children. She also has multiple sclerosis, and it’s been difficult for her to go get her medications.

Now she has another major worry: her two school-aged kids, 11 and seven years old, have to get tested after an outbreak at their school forced it to shut down. There were recently at Holy Spirit Catholic Elementary School.

“If you ask me, the kids shouldn’t have been in school to begin with,” she said. “I mean, they pulled them out of school back in March. The situation is much worse now, right?”

Grenaway decried a lack of resources in the neighbourhood to help people in need. She said there aren’t enough walk-in clinics despite a growing population. Even getting a COVID-19 test appointment can take days, she said.

“People need to watch their behaviour more, but I think our community also gets left out and ignored by government a lot,” Grenaway said.

As a pharmacist in the area, Khalid Bhatti has seen the impact of COVID-19 on essential workers in this neighbourhood first-hand. The number of his own patients who test positive has been increasing steadily for the past few weeks. That rise has more to do with the nature of their jobs than with ignorance of safety measures, he said.

“They are out there every day, keeping the economic engine going,” said Bhatti, who noted the vast majority of his clients are truck drivers and people working in logistics, retail and restaurants.

There are many complicating factors that account for why this part of Brampton is particularly hard hit by COVID-19, Bhatti said.

Many people live in poverty and earn a low wage, even while they risk their lives to go to work. There are a lot of rental properties and rooming houses in the area for students as well as multi-generational families, and this creates more density than other areas, he said.

Language barriers compound things. Many residents in the area are recent immigrants whose first language may not be English. In addition, the messages coming from different levels of government keep changing and it can be confusing for people to know what to do.

Bhatti gave the example of Education Minister Stephen Lecce, who last week said the government might extend winter break for students, only to reverse this the very next day.

“The back-and-forth, every day, does not help,” said Bhatti. Governments need to be co-ordinated and consistent in what they tell the public, he said.

“I, as a pharmacist, am getting confused by the messaging. I can only imagine what it’s like for people who have English as their second or third language, which predominantly this area has.”

To curb the spread of the virus, the government should be providing incentives for testing, Furness said. If tests come back positive, people should be given access to — plans are underway in Peel for these — and money to cover lost wages and groceries for their families for the time they need to quarantine.

Furness adds that public health units should employ people who share an identity and language with the community they will be working in.

The few people who don’t respect safety measures cause a lot of pain to those just trying to survive the pandemic.

In the parking lot across from a community service centre near Williams Parkway and Airport Road, Georgina Kuaninoo, a longtime resident, says it breaks her heart to hear stories of police breaking up large parties.

“Why 100 people are getting together to party in this pandemic, I don’t understand,” she said. Kuaninoo has, on several occasions, yelled at people not wearing masks in public, or at those not observing a proper distance from one another.

“I haven’t seen my grandkids in a long time, and it’s tough. We only speak on the phone,” she said.

“This thing is spreading like fire and everybody is going to die if we don’t pay attention.”

Angelyn Francis is a Toronto-based reporter for the Star covering equity and inequality. Her reporting is funded by the Canadian government through its Local Journalism Initiative. Reach her via email:

Gilbert Ngabo is a Star breaking news reporter based in Toronto. Follow him on Twitter: